A strange couple of days on the bands. They’ve either been noisy or dead, at least at my QTH. I spun the dial this morning and other than POTA folks and AM rag chewers, it was hard to find any signals, quiet or loud. I monitor a couple daily nets, waiting to see if anyone checks in that I need before I check in. They seemed like the effort to make contact would be more than I was willing to put in.

I did have an interesting few minutes on FT8. I made back-to-back contacts with stations in Estonia and Latvia. I already had Estonia on phone, but it was new on digital and Latvia was an ATNO. There was also a Ukrainian station on the band that I chased without any luck. Just needed stations from Lithuania and Belarus to complete the regional full house.

The Ukrainian station reminded me that I recently read Volodymyr Gurtovy’s War Diaries: A Radio Amateur in Kyiv, an accounting of his experiences during the first year of the current war. At the time amateurs were not allowed to operate. I’m not sure if those restrictions have been dropped, or the occasional Ukrainian ham that appears is violating them, figuring their government has bigger problems than a ham radio station broadcasting.

FT8 is not a method of emergency communications nor for passing traffic from folks inside the war zone to the rest of the world. It’s purely for pleasure.

How can someone be operating in such a manner four years into the war? I don’t say that to be judgmental. Rather I genuinely question how someone has the time, the shelter and tools, and most importantly the courage to jump on air and send out meaningless digital signals in the midst of a war.

Perhaps that is the point, though. To simply be practicing the everyday pursuits you enjoyed before the war began despite the presence of foreign invaders. If you don’t let them defeat your spirit, they can’t defeat your country. Etc, etc.

Good for that op for being on today. I hope they remain safe.